First of all, collecting DOESN'T help to prevent these things from being lost to the sands of time. I like full sets of awards with veterans' stories and photos, but majority of collectors of military awards collect medals, not the history of these veterans, thus full sets of medals become rare, because dealers simply break sets into pieces and sell each item individually. My set consists of photos + medals + orders + documents to every medal and order + badges + a real airclock from a panel board of I-16, but how many people want to buy ALL this? It makes more sense to just split the set and sell things separately, it will be much faster, even though you won't get an extra % of cash for the story. It matters a lot who was the original owner of a medal and how did he get it. For example, the sets of military awards belonging to former members "Night Witches", the Soviet all-female aviation regiment, cost a lot even if the awards themselves are not rare. <a href="
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_WitchesThe" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_WitchesThe</a> awards that belonged to generals, NKVD, pilots or sailors attract additional attention from buyers. Now, the most interesting part of Soviet awards and what makes them exceptionally well suited for collection of people's stories, not just shiny trinkets: the Soviet awards are numbered. Every military order (but only some medals!) has a number on the back side, the numbers were recorded in special award books that were issued to each person who received the award and in government documents that were sent to the state archives. Thus, you can find out to whom and what award belonged by just having an award book or access to the archives. Access to the archives isn't free and costs about $15, but access will pay for itself if you discover that the award belonged to someone important, thus boosting the market value of your item.I don't know about the post-war award system in the West , but I know that only the Mongols (Mongolian People's Republic was a thing and its awards were made by Goznak <a href="
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goznak" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goznak</a> ) and the Soviet Union marked their awards during WW2. It would be much harder to get a real set of awards of an American/British/German soldier. You can fake the Western sets of awards simply by buying the necessary documents and then some random suitable military orders, it would be nearly impossible to disprove that the awards and documents are not from the same set.I once saw at the auction a set of Soviet awards which belonged to a veteran who stole his orders from his dead brothers-in-arms during the war, it would be impossible to discover that the awards didn't belong to him if it were not for the numeration.In my photos you can see my order of the Patriotic War of 2nd class, about 921 000 of these orders were issued during the war + 350 000 of orders of the Patriotic War of 1st class; this one does not belong to any rare sub-category and has no great value. On the technical side, the difference between 1st (3rd pic) and 2nd class (1, 2nd pics) is that the 1st class had golden rays (585 probe), instead of silver, behind the star. The order of the first class consists of 8 grams of gold, 16 grams of silver and weighs 32 grams, while the order of the second class consists of 0,300 grams of gold (non-enameled parts were gilded), 24 grams of silver and weighs 28 grams. The Soviet government was very willing to use precious metals in their awards, I do not know about the state in the world that used gold, silver and platinum as massively as the Soviets did, there's only a handful of German awards which used silver of gold. Germans don't call the Iron Cross "Iron" for nothing. The Order of the Patriotic War and the Iron Cross performed similar functions and were issued in similar quantities, therefore I consider them to be similar awards.